Hebrews 11

Coming soon to a theater near you! The faith chapter.   It almost reads like a movie trailer for a great action film.  We hear about the stars of the Old Testament, heroes and heroines of the faith.  They were the ancestors of the people Hebrews was written to.  They seem like giants, all of their famous stories a part of growing up Jewish, or for many of us today, also a part of our childhood.  But as the writer recaps the adventures, he reminds us that their stories were incomplete.  They had faith in something they couldn’t see, often something they didn’t understand.  And all of them, no matter how great their faith or amazing their actions didn’t receive the promise in their lifetime.  The readers of Hebrews were going to face some very dark times.  Things were bad and getting worse.  Many of them would be martyrs and the stories of mocking, scourging, imprisonment, stoning, being sawn in two, and killed by the sword would become reality for these believers.  They needed to be reminded that they had something even better than their fathers and mothers had.  They had received the promise.  They could clearly see what had only been a shadow, a hope, a whisper of things to come.  Today most of us don’t face the same struggles the early saints faced.  But we do face pain, trials, and adversity.  We do get beaten down, mocked, torn up.  We can read this and remember that we have something even the greats of the Old Testament didn’t have.  We have the promise fulfilled.